1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and a method for converting a document image into an electronic document.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, due to spreading of network represented by the Internet, many documents are distributed electronically, however, many electronic documents are also distributed in a state being printed on papers. Among the distributed paper documents, there are ones in which different size papers (A4 size, A3 size, or the like) and different manuscript-direction papers (longitudinal manuscript-direction, transversal manuscript-direction, or the like) are mixed. On the other hand, a technology is known which converts such a paper document into an electronic document. Moreover, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-173922, a technology is disclosed which inputs a plurality of document images, divides them into groups (chapters) each composed of continuous pages having the same manuscript-direction, and thereby generates a document of hierarchical structure.
When converting a paper document in which papers each having a different size and papers each having a different manuscript direction are mixed, into a reusable electronic document, it is desirable to carry out conversion so that the electronic document can be reproduced and printed while maintaining each page size (paper size). However, there also exists a format of an electronic document in which document pages each having a different page size cannot be mixed in one electronic document. For example, in an application of Microsoft PowerPoint (trademark), since the direction of slide (page setting) must be determined to be longitudinal or transversal, it is not possible to mix longitudinal pages and transversal pages in one file. When an electronic document has such a format, if a page having a paper size different from that of an electronic document needs to be included in the document, the size of the page have to be changed. If the size is changed, however, there is a case that a display may be difficult to see, a printed image may be small, or a printed image may be larger than the paper. This degrades an editing property and reproducibility during printing of the electronic document, causing a user to suffer from inconvenience of use.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-173922, although, pages are divided into chapters by continuity of their manuscript-directions, this technology is based on a premise of a format in which documents each having a different page size can be mixed, and there is no description regarding to a format in which documents each having a different page size can not be mixed.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a device that, in case of converting paper documents in which different size and manuscript-direction papers are mixed into electronic documents, generates an easily reusable electronic document even if it has a format in which documents each having a different page size can not be mixed.